An aerial advertisement for mail-order abortion drugs that flew over the Kentucky State Fair has landed a pro-choice activist organization founded by a former Biden staffer in legal trouble.
Kentucky Attorney General Russell Coleman’s office has filed a civil lawsuit against the New York-based activist group Mayday Health. The group does not prescribe abortion drugs itself, but directs women to organizations that ship the drugs by mail to all 50 states.
In late August, Mayday Health flew a plane over Louisville and the Kentucky State Fair to promote abortion, according to the lawsuit. The banner read “Abortion Pills By Mail” and directed people to Mayday Health.
“These out of state activists are not only breaking Kentucky law, they seem to delight in rubbing our faces in it,” Attorney General Coleman said in a statement. “The State Fair is a beloved Kentucky tradition for families and children to celebrate our Commonwealth.”
“We refuse to allow Mayday to taint our values and put our people at risk,” the Kentucky attorney general declared.
In a statement to The Christian Post, Leo Raisner (Olivia Raisner), executive director of Mayday Health, appeared to welcome the lawsuit.
“We look forward to defending our First Amendment protected work in court — and winning, like we have against similar efforts to suppress our speech,” Raisner told CP. “Abortion pills are safe, effective and FDA-approved, and everyone deserves access to that information.”
Raisner worked as a traveling content director at the White House during President Joe Biden’s administration, from January 2021 to January 2022. Before that, Raisner was a traveling digital director for the Biden-Harris transition, from November 2020 to January 2021.
Raisner founded Mayday Health in May 2022, a month before the U.S. Supreme Court ruled there is no constitutional right to abortion and overturned the precedent set in the 1973 Roe v. Wade decision. The organization began promoting abortion drugs in Kentucky last year. Mayday Health ran ads at more than 80 gas stations last year reading: “Pregnant? Don’t Want to Be? Learn more at Mayday.Health,” Kentucky Today reports.
In January, the Kentucky attorney general’s office opened a civil investigation in response to Mayday Health advertisements at gas stations in Western Kentucky, including in Christian, Simpson and Logan counties.
Kentucky banned mail-order abortion drugs in 2022 through House Bill 3, which made it a crime to dispense, prescribe or distribute abortion-inducing medication by mail, courier or delivery service.
The attorney general’s lawsuit also accuses Mayday Health of violating Kentucky’s Consumer Protection Act, which bars “unfair, false, misleading, or deceptive acts or practices in the conduct of any trade or commerce.”
According to the lawsuit, Mayday Health’s “advertisements in Kentucky are unfair, false, misleading, or deceptive because they give the impression that abortion-inducing drugs are available to be delivered to Kentuckians by mail when, in fact, it is illegal under Kentucky law to distribute abortion-inducing drugs by mail.”
Beyond “falsely advertising” that Kentucky residents can legally receive abortion-inducing drugs by mail, the lawsuit accuses Mayday Health of facilitating their illegal distribution by mail.
Pro-life leaders and state attorneys general have repeatedly urged the Trump administration to reverse a Food and Drug Administration policy, dating to the Biden era, that made abortion drugs available by mail and ended the in-person dispensing requirement.
The FDA says it is currently conducting a safety review of mifepristone, the first drug in the abortion pill regimen.
Advocates have warned that emergency room visits caused by complications from taking the abortion pill are more frequently being miscoded, pointing to an analysis produced in collaboration between the pro-life research organization Charlotte Lozier Institute, researchers at the University of North Carolina, the American Association of Pro-Life Obstetricians and Gynecologists and the Florida-based Elliott Institute.
Additionally, a 2025 study report published by the Restoration of America Foundation, based on insurance claims from 2017 to 2023, found that more than one in 10 women who use chemical abortion drugs experience an adverse event. The study also suggests that abortion drugs mailed to women are 22 times more dangerous than what the FDA discloses to patients.
The study identified more than 600,000 patients who obtained 865,727 chemical abortions — suggesting repeat abortions.
“The dataset further shows an upward trend in serious adverse event rates in recent years,” the study states. “In 2023 alone, 154,554 chemical abortions occurred with a serious adverse event rate of 11.2 percent.”
Other studies have reportedly found that abortion drugs are associated with higher rates of severe or critical emergency room visits compared with surgical abortions and live births.
Samantha Kamman is a reporter for The Christian Post. She can be reached at: [email protected]. Follow her on Twitter: @Samantha_Kamman
